Reviewing The Nest at Friday Harbour

Rick Young

Rick Young

The scale of The Nest, Friday Harbour’s recently opened Doug Carrick designed golf course in Innisfil, Ont., can be a challenge to appreciate.

Chalk that up to optics.

Nothing about the 200-acre parcel of rolling, the golf-infused centrepiece of a $1.5-billion, 600-acre Friday Harbour development, looks contrived nor does it appear manmade or manufactured to any degree. Instead it seems to have been crafted quite naturally with an assist from Mother Nature’s guiding hand.

Something similar can be said for the lake area at the nearby marina. Servicing Lake Simcoe, this 1,000-slip multiple canal docking area, compete with boardwalk retail space, is the social and commerce hub of the upscale community. Up to 2,000 condos, townhouse, and hotel residences are on the Friday Harbour Resort masterplan, making the all-season retreat near Barrie one of the province’s most intriguing new developments.

Carrick, my playing partner during a recent round on the shared golf vision of Friday Harbour developers, Optus Capital Corp., Condrain Group (owners of Eagles Nest GC in Vaughn), Pemberton Group and Geranium, was eager to provide some context for the aforementioned scale of The Nest but also the critical role the marina development played in the golf course product.

For that we stopped on the third tee.

“You can see a little sliver of Lake Simcoe right there,” said Carrick, pointing to an opening along a line of trees in the distance. “We wanted enough elevation in at least one spot to get that view so to give you a sense of how much earth was moved for the build, right here, we’re standing on 40 feet of fill. Look at the farmer’s field across the road (pointing the other direction and down). The land here was that flat.”

Turns out, according to the Ontario Golf Hall of Fame architect, the former Big Bay Marina harbour area was as small as the golf course land was flat. In the ultimate exercise of land repurposing, the fill that had been dug from the marina to build what is now Friday Harbour’s 53-acre multi-purpose facility was loaded into trucks and hauled to the golf course site. There it was crafted by Carrick and the construction team into ridges, dips and gentle-to-abrupt slope enhancements. Ultimately, it provides The Nest with its intriguing 18-hole landscape.

How much fill was used? It’s a number that still leaves the designer somewhat awestruck.

“About 2 million cubic metres of earth was moved (from the marina). That’s over 170,000 truck loads,” smiled Carrick.

With little to no new golf course development going on across Canada these days, opening The Nest (which derives its name from sister course, Eagles Nest in Maple, Ont.) last month is bound to garner industry-wide attention especially with this particular project taking well over a decade to complete. Modest compared to Carrick’s other recent course opening, Lebovic Golf Club in Aurora, Ont., which required nearly 20 years to build, the designer’s patience, while doubtless tested, takes a back seat to the appreciation he feels in having a shiny, new golf course with his name on it opened for play.

“Lots of projects you work on never make it off the drawing board,” Carrick explained. “You do a routing, do the drawings, crunch numbers and for one reason or another it doesn’t get planning approval or financing. This one took time, but it got the approvals, got the financing and went ahead. I always got a sense on this project that Geradium was determined to build this. I felt like it was going to happen, that it was going to take time, but I always felt in the end there would be golf here.”

Following a new type of urbanism business model prominent in areas across the United States, Friday Harbour’s development team had plenty to consider early on, so it contacted American architect and urban planner Andres Duany to conceptualize a walkable community, highlighted by a marina and golf course components. Carrick was asked to be part of the planning process before being commissioned to take on the golf course, one he was told, “Has to be the best golf course you have ever designed.”

“No pressure, right?” laughed Carrick.

The original masterplan called for The Nest to be connected to the resort and marina as a continuous 18-hole layout, looping out and coming back around part of a residential component.

Environmental consultants had other ideas. With a number of natural features including wetlands and forest needing to be preserved, Friday Harbour’s plans for golf needed to be re-worked. As it turned out it was probably just as well.

“After all of that happened it became just about designing a golf course, not so much integrated with the community, but more as a standalone property on roughly 200 acres,” Carrick said.

About the same time a flat, blank canvas was bestowed quite the material enhancement.

“The developer asked, ‘Can you use this soil from the marina?’ It was going to cost them a fortune to have it hauled off sight so we started doing grading plans, step by step, cut and fill calculations, in this case, how much earth was I going to use in these plans,” said Carrick. “Of course you never hit the number the first time so you go back and say, ‘OK, I need more fill here,’ then work it until you get the number you’re supposed to be at.”

As we played the 7,101-yard, par-72 layout I wondered what level of satisfaction Carrick derives from not only completing a golf course product but also in creating the entire land parcel it rests upon. Not surprisingly, he said there was immense satisfaction at the end despite some apprehension at the outset.

“I was a little bit nervous at first given the volume of earth,” he admitted. “Eagles Nest was probably the closest in volume I had ever worked with before and it was just under a million-and-a-half cubic meters. I was worried, is this going to look weird? Is it going to look artificial with that much earth? I wanted to make it look like a very natural landscape, like it was formed naturally rather than by bulldozers. That was the objective. For the most part we pulled it off. It looks very natural.”

Textures, contrasts, colours and some stunning visuals make playing The Nest a unique experience. Part of that is dictated by natural areas framing the first 15 holes, the result of forests that were removed to build the final three holes of the golf course and development and needing to be replaced to be signed off on by the environmental folks. A mixture of Devils Pulpit, Thistle, Clover, Fescue and other plant species complemented Rubbeckia hirta, commonly known across North America as Black-eyed Susan. It maintains its ability to flower from June to September and not only provides The Nest with a unique contrast of colours, but also a fiendishly difficult place to recover from, not unlike Heather in the United Kingdom.

“We basically had to replace the same amount of area, maybe even a bit more area, than what was removed on the golf course,” Carrick said. “It was a bit of a challenge because it’s a fairly compact site — 200 acres — so it doesn’t leave a lot of land left between the holes. The challenge was to come up with that amount of area and still make it playable. If you get too much natural area the golf course becomes more difficult if you hit it off line.”

The Nest should certainly appeal to the golfing masses. I would characterize Carrick’s effort as good fun for any skill level of player and an enjoyable experience no matter how you score. It has an exceptional range facility, soon-to-open clubhouse with an array of amenities, and enough detail in the landscape to make it memorable.